Saturday November 18, 2006

Many of you have been sharing pictures of your first snowfalls. I’ve read accounts of heavy rains and wind gusts of up to 50 m.p.h. I know some of you are relying on either your heater or your wood stove 24/7 by now. I thought it might be fun to share with you what the days before Thanksgiving look like around Copper’s house.

There are still more leaves on my trees than off of them. And, as you can see, the thirteen year old is still needing to mow the grass every week.

I still open my windows and doors in the early afternoon. We have used the wood stove several mornings and evenings, but the afternoons are still pleasantly warm and near 70. The wood stove hasn’t seen a fire in about 48 hours.

There are honey bees visiting my still-blooming roses. (The bee was camera shy and flew away every time I focused in on the roses.)

Some of my trees are still brilliantly green, with no sign of fall color even in mid- November. Actually, I absolutely love my weeping willow trees. They usually have leaves through New Year’s Day. I know it’s really and truly winter when the weeping willows are bare! To add icing to the late leaf loss cake, there are almost always leaf buds on my weeping willows by Valentine’s Day.

My children are still playing outdoors in their bare feet.

My hay fever flares up when I go outside to cut some flowers for the house.

My blueberries are confused and are blooming a week before Thanksgiving. I have several blueberry bushes. Most are in their lovely, red hued fall color, but two of them began to turn red, stopped and are now blooming! Unbelievable!

In all fairness, most of my orchard trees have either lost their leaves, or are losing them. The apples and pears are still covered in leaves, but they’re beginning to lose their leaves, too. And one morning, a couple of weeks ago, we did wake up to a light frost. So, maybe it will yet be cold and fall-like here.

I have no finished project pictures to show you today, either. I’ve worked on quite a bit, but nothing is finished I should have some pictures to show next week, though. I should have a bit more progress on my tally next week, too.

It looks like Winter here and we could have some snow tomorrow. The autumn started out great but quickly turned both cold and wet (and windy!). Our meterologist is predicting a “bad winter”. This is one time I hope he is incorrect.

I am SO glad we won’t be commuting to the junior college after mid-December if we do begin to get a lot of snow or ice.

Thanks for the pictures. It’s lovely to see the color green, not to mention FLOWERS, again.

I would love to know where you get all your patterns for all of your projects! Are there certains books that you love or patterns you have found online? I hope you would be willing to share some of this!

Yvonne :o)

About Copperswife

I'm Cheryl Linebarger, and I've been Copper's Wife for 36 years. I have two grown daughters, one grown son, one teen son, two wonderful sons-in-love and eight grandchildren, 13 years old and under. Copperswife is a place to find encouragement as you joyfully look well to the ways of your own household.